The Importance of Teacher Background Qualifications for ...

Contents

Page

Executive Summary ........................................................................................................................ 1 Analytic Data and Method .......................................................................................................... 1 Highlights: What We Have Learned So Far ............................................................................... 2 Suggested Next Steps.................................................................................................................. 4

I. Introduction............................................................................................................................. 6

II. Theoretical Framework ........................................................................................................... 6

III. Data ......................................................................................................................................... 7

IV. Method .................................................................................................................................. 10 Selecting the Appropriate Outcome Variable: Pre- and Posttest Score Gain vs. Posttest Score ........................................................................................................................................ 10 Analytical Model 1: Ordinary Least Squares ........................................................................... 11 Analytical Model 2: Student Fixed Effects Model ................................................................... 12 Analytical Model 3: Teacher Random Effects Model (Two-Level Hierarchical Linear Modeling).................................................................................................................................. 12 Results Comparison From Proposed Models............................................................................ 13

V. Results................................................................................................................................... 15 Findings From State 1............................................................................................................... 15 Findings From State 2............................................................................................................... 16 Findings From State 3............................................................................................................... 17 Further Analyses of Teacher-Student Race and Ethnicity Matching ....................................... 20

VI. Recommendation on Data Collection ................................................................................... 22

VII. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 23

Appendix A ................................................................................................................................... 25

Technical Notes ............................................................................................................................ 36 Data Cleaning Procedures......................................................................................................... 36 Student, Teacher, and Class Data Match .................................................................................. 37 Standardization of Student Pre- and Posttest Scores ................................................................ 38

References..................................................................................................................................... 39

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Teacher Effectiveness in Adult Education: The Importance of Teacher Background Qualifications for Student Learning

Executive Summary

The federal adult education program serves more than 2 million eligible adults who lack basic literacy and English language skills.1 Although numerous studies in K?12 have shown that measurable teacher characteristics such as certification, advanced degrees, and teacher scores on standardized tests are related to student achievement (Aaronson, Barrow, & Sander, 2007; Kane, Rockoff, & Staiger, 2006), no studies with strong statistical designs have explored teacher effectiveness in adult education.

To provide descriptive information about the characteristics of teachers in adult education and to explore whether teacher quality is associated with student achievement in adult education, the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE) contracted with American Institutes for Research (AIR) to produce four research briefs. The first brief provides research on the characteristics of adult education teachers, this second brief examines the relationships between teacher characteristics and student achievement, the third brief investigates the relationships between teacher characteristics and students transitioning into postsecondary education and the fourth brief focuses on communicating common issues with administrative data and provides recommendations from a research and evaluation perspective.

The adult education research literature lacks evidence that this type of analysis has ever been done at the student level, most likely because of the lack of appropriate data. The analyses in this second brief provide a rare look at how the characteristics of adult education teachers relate to the academic achievement of adult students using student-level data obtained from three states. Results of this study allow us to better understand adult education teachers and the adult student population.

Analytic Data and Method

To assess whether adult education teacher characteristics are correlated with student academic achievement, this study focused on the following areas:

? Teacher demographic characteristics, including gender, age, race/ethnicity, and

employment status (part-time or full-time teacher)

? Teacher educational attainment

? Teacher professional development (number of hours participated in teacher PD); and

? Teacher experience, including total number of years in education and total number of

years in adult education.

We used adult student?level data for the 2008?09, 2009?10, and 2010?11 program years obtained from the adult education data systems of three states. Our sample included approximately 723,000 students in adult basic education, adult secondary education, and English as a second language programs and nearly 13,000 adult education teachers from 3 states. Two

1 Retrieved from , National Reporting System (NRS) database, February 11, 2013.

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Teacher Effectiveness in Adult Education: The Importance of Teacher Background Qualifications for Student Learning

states from the southern region of the United States and one from the Midwest were included in this study.

Our sample is not necessarily representative of all adult education teachers and students. However, the existing research examining adult education teachers and student performance is limited; therefore, despite our limited sample, the research in this report provides important information about this population of adult education teachers and adult students.

Because the availability of data on teacher demographics, educational attainment, PD, and experience vary across states, we conducted our analysis by each state separately. In States 1 and 3, where overall student pre- and posttest scores were available, we estimate the relationships between teacher characteristics and student overall performance. In States 1 and 2, which provided student pre- and posttest scores by subject area (language, mathematics, oral English, reading, and literacy), we performed our analyses for each subject area to obtain more detailed estimates on teacher characteristics and student achievement correlations.

To gauge reliability, we employed multiple regression models: ordinary least squares (OLS) model controlling for only teacher characteristics; OLS model controlling for teacher, student, and program characteristics; student fixed effects model; and teacher random effects (RE) model controlling for teacher, student, and program characteristics. Our preferred model was the teacher RE model with which we estimated the relationship between teacher characteristics and student achievement while accounting for all other characteristics that potentially might affect student achievement and for the fact that multiple students are nested within one teacher. Results reported here are from analyses using this model.2

Highlights: What We Have Learned So Far

We draw our conclusions based on the results from our preferred teacher RE model as shown in Table ES-1. We did not find consistent relationships between key teacher demographics and student outcomes across three states; full-time teachers show a small positive relationship with student achievement in two states for mathematics and in one state for reading while the opposite relation was found in a third state. The mixed findings require further research in other states to understand better what the important factors are. Teacher educational attainment shows positive relationships with student achievement in two states for oral English and overall and no relationship in the third state. We also found a positive relationship between PD participation and student achievement in one state and no relationship in others. Teacher overall years of experience show a positive relationship with overall student posttest scores in State 1; data were not available in the other two. Teacher adult education experience presents a positive relationship with overall and mathematics results in State 1 and with language and mathematics results in State 2; there was no observed relationship in the third state.

2 Full tables and discussions of various models are presented in the appended Technical Notes. We also employed student, teacher, and program fixed effects models to account for potential time-invariant student, teacher, and program characteristics while estimating teacher value-added. However, the data provided from the states did not allow us to produce much meaningful inferences from such models.

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Teacher Effectiveness in Adult Education: The Importance of Teacher Background Qualifications for Student Learning

Tables A4 and A6 in Appendix A illustrate the regression results from all models on key teacher characteristics from States 1 and 3. Table A5 in Appendix A presents the regression results on key teacher characteristics by subject area from State 2.

Question 1: Are teacher demographics related to student achievement?

? Data on teacher demographics are limited in all three states, and we could not identify

any common patterns among them. Although we observe positive relationships between being a female teacher and teacher age with student outcomes in state 1, we did not detect similar relationships in other states. Asian adult education teachers had a statistically significant negative relation with student performance in State 3, and students with Native American adult education teachers had higher mathematics and language posttest scores compared to students with White teachers in State 1. However, we did not observe any other statistically significant relationships between teacher race and student achievement in other states. In State 1, students with full-time teachers performed better on mathematics assessments than students with part-time teachers. We did not observe any statistically significant effects in other subjects in State 1. In State 2, students with part-time teachers scored lower in language, mathematics, reading, and literacy assessments compared to students with full-time teachers. Compared to having full-time adult teachers, however, students with part-time adult education teachers had significantly higher posttest scores in State 3.

Question 2: Is teacher professional development related to student achievement?

? PD programs varied significantly across states. Data available from the states did not

allow us to gauge the quality of PD; instead, we could only evaluate whether and how teacher PD participation was correlated with student achievement using the number of hours of PD participation. We found a small but statistically significant positive relationship between hours of PD and students' oral English posttest scores in State 2. No relationship was found in other states.

Question 3: Is teacher experience related to student achievement?

? A teacher's years of experience teaching adult education was found to be significantly

related to students' overall and mathematics posttest scores in State 1 and to students' language and mathematics posttest scores in State 2. In addition, students in classes with teachers who had more years of experience in any level of education showed higher posttest scores in State 1. Data on overall teacher experience were not available in States 2 and 3, and no relationship was found between adult education teaching experience and student outcomes in State 3.

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